Record performance gives Korda LPGA win
Kim holds off Cantlay by one shot to pick up PGA Tour victory at La Quinta
LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. — For Jessica Korda, the Diamond Resorts Tournament of Champions was all about her ability to just hang in there.
Trailing by three shots headed to the back nine at Four Seasons Golf and Sports Club Orlando on Sunday, she first caught Danielle Kang with a late four-birdie burst to shoot 5-under 66, then won with a curling 30-footer for birdie on the first playoff hole.
Kang shot 68. The leader after each of the first three rounds, she had a chance to extend the playoff, but missed her 18-foot birdie putt on the low side at the 185-yard 18th.
It was the sixth LPGA victory for the 27-year-old Korda, her last one coming nearly three years ago.
She and Kang finished at 24-under 260 to eclipse the previous tournament record by 10 shots.
Korda, ranked 23rd in the world, also had to turn back her younger sister, Nelly Korda, 22, who at No. 4 in the world ranking was the top player in the elite winners-only field.
“I knew I was going to have to go low today,” said Jessica Korda. Half of her six victories have arrived at season-opening events. “It was a crazy day … A crazy two days. A crazy week!”
Nelly Korda started her round six shots back Sunday and shot a 64 –- which included a missed 3-footer for birdie at 16 –- that left her two shots out of the playoff.
Saturday, Jessica Korda became the sixth player in LPGA history to shoot 60 or better with her sparkling 11-under 60. A day later, she was slow to build any sort of momentum, playing her first 12 holes in 1 under. At one point early in the opening nine, Kang had a 7-foot putt to stretch her lead to five shots, and she was threatening to leave the field way behind.
Jessica Korda had owned the back nine all week (she would play it in 21-under par despite her three closing bogeys Friday). Trailing by two shots while standing on the par-5 13th tee, and relaxed as she chatted to three celebrity players on the tee, she knew she needed to be more aggressive –especially because Kang had yet to make a single bogey all week.
“When you’re chasing, you need to keep the pedal to the metal,” Korda said, “and I wasn’t doing that.”
Kang went 68 holes in the tournament without a bogey (and 84 holes overall, dating to December’s CME Group Championship) her streak ending when she threeputted for bogey at the rugged 419yard 15th.
Kang, also seeking her sixth
LPGA victory, had spoken all week about not being able to prepare for the event as she normally would. That caught up to her down the stretch. Though she never tested positive for COVID-19, she twice was exposed, and took six tests before getting on a plane from Las Vegas to Orlando, landing late Monday night. Still, she’d played flawlessly. But when she needed to make clutch shots down the stretch, she discovered something was missing.
“’I’m not disappointed in that I didn’t win,” Kang said. “It’s not about winning and losing for me. It’s about being able to execute when I want to –- and having a feeling when I feel like I can’t do something is something I don’t like.”
In the Diamond Resorts’ 53-player celebrity division, tennis player Mardy Fish, captain of the U.S. Davis Cup team, finished on top with 158 points, beating Chad Pfiefer, an inspirational former military serviceman who competes with a prosthetic leg.
PGA TOUR: In La Quinta, Calif., Si Woo Kim birdied two of the final three holes to finish a rock-solid, 8-under 64, coolly rallying past late-charging Patrick Cantlay by one shot to win The American Express on Sunday for his third PGA Tour victory.
A year after Kim withdrew from the desert tournament because of a back injury following an awful first round, he began the final round with a share of the lead as he attempted to win for the first time since the 2017 Players Championship.
The 25-year-old South Korean didn’t flinch when Cantlay shot a 61 and surged out of 13th place to the front while breaking the Stadium Course record by two strokes.
Playing six groups behind Cantlay, Kim comfortably birdied the par-5 16th to pull even. Kim then buried a 19-foot birdie putt on the island green on the 17th to take the lead, joyously pumping his fist when his perfectly paced putt dropped.
Kim wrapped up his third bogey-free round of the tournament — all on the Pete Dyedesigned Stadium Course — with a two-putt par on the 18th to finish at 23-under 265.
A year ago, Kim shot a 15-over 87 in the opening round on the easier neighboring Nicklaus Course before withdrawing.
Australia’s Cameron Davis shot a 64 to finish in a career-best third at 20 under. Tony Finau had a 68 and finished fourth after starting the final round with a share of the lead in his quest to land his longawaited second PGA Tour win.
EUROPEAN TOUR: In Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, Tyrrell Hatton won the European Tour’s season-opening Abu Dhabi Championship by four strokes after overnight leader Rory McIlroy faded.
Hatton shot a 6-under 66 to finish at 18-under 270 at Abu Dhabi Golf Club. The Englishman won his sixth tour title.
Australia’s Jason Scrivener closed with a 66 to finish second. McIlroy was third at 13 under after a 72.